When a pedestrian collides with a motor vehicle, a considerable proportion of serious or even fatal injuries is due to the pedestrian's head striking the engine hood. In order to keep this risk of injury as low as possible, the engine hood must be designed to have controlled resilience in the head impact region. U.S. Pat. No. 5,706,908 discloses an engine hood having an energy-absorbing impact body under the outer panel. The design of the engine hood is such that the energy generated during impact against components in the engine space is absorbed by virtue of the outer engine hood panel undergoing ideal deformation to absorb the impact energy. A disadvantage to be seen here is that it is always necessary to have an additional impact body and energy absorption takes place mainly due to local plastic deformation.
Japanese Patent Document 05 155 355 discloses an engine hood stiffened by means of regularly arranged reinforcing profiles, in such a way that it undergoes plastic deformation in a controlled manner in the event of a head impact. The rigid junction points of the reinforcing profiles are weakened by holes and cutouts in order to reduce rigidity peaks in these regions. Here, too, there is the disadvantage that the impact energy is absorbed solely in the form of local plastic deformation. The result of this is that the engine hood has a substantially softer behavior in the middle of the hood as compared with the supported edges of the hood.